The day has been marked by speeches by Erdogan and medical association. Erdogan in Tunisia did not take any steps backward and declared his commitment to demolish Gezi Park. Moreover, original plans from 90s came back on track to build the central mosque of Taksim, replacing the country’s most famous arts and culture hall, AKM (the only opera house in Istanbul). His insistence on building monumental mosques so far has destroyed many forests and cultural areas.

For his come-back speech from Tunisia, AKP organizations organized massive interconnectedness collecting AKP members from everywhere in Istanbul and surrounding region and could hardly gather 10.000 people. When speaking, Erdogan kept referring to the protests as a game of international money lobbies, and a deeply rooted international conspiracy to topple his government and slide Turkey into major chaos. He defined his movement as the victims of all events, all times in the republic. “the so-called protests made for 5-6 trees in gezi park [supporters howling] left us with 3 dead today … all because of protesters. However important are their protesters’ death, so is my martyred policeman’s life” [police commissar died while chasing a protester with gun and fell off a bridge] “ police only defended order and peace, as they were looting people’s property in that park” …………….?!

He kept referring to all events that his agent provocateurs did [plundering, breaking, beating, teargasing] as deeds of protesters. He has been showing all peaceful protesters as potential targets to be crashed in the name of democracy.

Secondly, it needs to be clarified that there was no sincere call for restraint from the PM. If anything, it might be possible to say that there were several moments with provoking phrases directing fingers at Gezi Park, and referring to peaceful protesters as “vandals, savages, violent bullies, looters, plunderers, terrorists, agents of international bankers, peace-breakers, anti-muslims, marginal, alcoholics”. After each sentence the crowd went wild with slogans such as:

-we are all soldiers of tayyip erdogan

-kick them hard, so that turkey listens to you

-ya allah bismillah allahuekber

-don’t worry supreme ruler, islamist youth here guarding

-give us the permission, we’ll crash gezi!

-allow us and we shall slaughter

-minorities know your place, don’t try our patience!

-arms be broken that attack the police

-police (the one who fell off a bridge and died) is a martyr of our democracy

-stand strong the religious youth with you

-we came here to die for you

-real turkey is here, where the hell is taksim

The more worrisome part of these slogans is that it is encouraged by AKP and they have been intentionally showing the Gezi protesters as potential easy targets to islamist youth. Same thing seems to be in repetitive motion as 20-30 years ago. Similar to the incitement of fear and hatred in society by a political leader. While Erdogan claims to have served time for a poem in 90s, these scenes a little prove that the accusations were not completely baseless. The cited poem was an islamist call to violence against non-muslims, showing them as potential targets. A poem cited tonight was from the same author, Mehmet Akif … who also wrote the national anthem (another controversial issue). But tonight’s poem focuses on not forgiving the oppressor and suffocating them in fact; based on a revenge story.

Apart from the big speech, there were also attacks on peaceful protesters and union strikes in Ankara and Istanbul; heavy police presence in all other cities’ main squares, now including Thrace as well. In some cities where AKP had received almost 70% of the vote, protesters reported that they were spit on, thrown water from balconies and other kinds of reactions from other civilians.

During the protests, Serbia’s Ankara embassy became target of gas canisters, consulate tweeted about it and Serbian MFA recalled him. So some people have been telling that twitter might become the “use of evil” for some professions in some understanding.

While the clashes continue everywhere else, the Taksim movement seems to be weakening in support. The tweet rates have been falling constantly. But in this, there is also a share of AKP’s tweet-buying. After attempts to censor twitter, manipulate trending topics, possibly bribing someone to interfere with the system to delete our conversational hashtags from the database, they have also started paying users with hundreds of thousands of followers to write pro-akp tweets.

It is not really certain how [bribe or threat], but the people - some of artist background - who have been in very much favor of the peaceful protests have declared they are no longer participating in anything till a later time and deleted their archives/accounts.

Lawyers have been declaring that the arbitrary arrests made are just slowing down justice and abuse people’s rights; while the medical association has been declaring that the police were attacking doctors who were trying to help wounded protesters.

According to official reports of the government, there are almost no protesters who were wounded, let alone beaten, tortured or maltreated. The reports read out by ministers show that majority of several hundred injured people are policemen who shot themselves or eachother in gassing-attacks.

It is also very important to note that there are 3 people missing right now who were unheard from for the last week and several others have been reported in other cities as well.

One last note is on the animals’ rights. There are tens of stray dogs and cats that were beaten to death by police in the events of the last week.

3 Responses to “Nightly report from Turkey 07-06-13”

What’s happening with Erdogan is , he’s a fundamentalist. And what they do is separate themselves from all of Nature and other living things,and declare themselves above other Living Beings. In this way, it’s easy for them to destroy forests, and extend their religious disregard for life, to Human Beings. Those that don’t share their own viewpoint.

This is EXACTLY, how the Turks operated in their conquests, in Europe.

Erdogan has stated to our faces, we, non-islamics, that he intends to retake the former territory of the Ottoman Empire. That includes every country in E. Eur: Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Crimea, et al.